Intentions | Page 9

and try to
reproduce, in her own simple and untutored way, some of the marvels of which he talks.
'No doubt there will always be critics who, like a certain writer in the Saturday Review,
will gravely censure the teller of fairy tales for his defective knowledge of natural history,
who will measure imaginative work by their own lack of any imaginative faculty, and
will hold up their ink-stained hands in horror if some honest gentleman, who has never
been farther than the yew-trees of his own garden, pens a fascinating book of travels like
Sir John Mandeville, or, like great Raleigh, writes a whole history of the world, without
knowing anything whatsoever about the past. To excuse themselves they will try and
shelter under the shield of him who made Prospero the magician, and gave him Caliban
and Ariel as his servants, who heard the Tritons blowing their horns round the coral reefs
of the Enchanted Isle, and the fairies singing to each other in a wood near Athens, who
led the phantom kings in dim procession across the misty Scottish heath, and hid Hecate
in a cave with the weird sisters. They will call upon Shakespeare--they always do--and
will quote that hackneyed passage forgetting that this unfortunate aphorism about Art
holding the mirror up to Nature, is deliberately said by Hamlet in order to convince the
bystanders of his absolute insanity in all art-matters.'
CYRIL. Ahem! Another cigarette, please.
VIVIAN. My dear fellow, whatever you may say, it is merely a dramatic utterance, and
no more represents Shakespeare's real views upon art than the speeches of Iago represent
his real views upon morals. But let me get to the end of the passage:
'Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged
by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror. She has
flowers that no forests know of, birds that no woodland possesses. She makes and
unmakes many worlds, and can draw the moon from heaven with a scarlet thread. Hers
are the "forms more real than living man," and hers the great archetypes of which things
that have existence are but unfinished copies. Nature has, in her eyes, no laws, no
uniformity. She can work miracles at her will, and when she calls monsters from the deep
they come. She can bid the almond-tree blossom in winter, and send the snow upon the
ripe cornfield. At her word the frost lays its silver finger on the burning mouth of June,
and the winged lions creep out from the hollows of the Lydian hills. The dryads peer
from the thicket as she passes by, and the brown fauns smile strangely at her when she
comes near them. She has hawk-faced gods that worship her, and the centaurs gallop at
her side.'
CYRIL. I like that. I can see it. Is that the end?
VIVIAN. No. There is one more passage, but it is purely practical. It simply suggests

some methods by which we could revive this lost art of Lying.
CYRIL. Well, before you read it to me, I should like to ask you a question. What do you
mean by saying that life, 'poor, probable, uninteresting human life,' will try to reproduce
the marvels of art? I can quite understand your objection to art being treated as a mirror.
You think it would reduce genius to the position of a cracked looking-glass. But you
don't mean to say that you seriously believe that Life imitates Art, that Life in fact is the
mirror, and Art the reality?
VIVIAN. Certainly I do. Paradox though it may seem--and paradoxes are always
dangerous things--it is none the less true that Life imitates art far more than Art imitates
life. We have all seen in our own day in England how a certain curious and fascinating
type of beauty, invented and emphasised by two imaginative painters, has so influenced
Life that whenever one goes to a private view or to an artistic salon one sees, here the
mystic eyes of Rossetti's dream, the long ivory throat, the strange square-cut jaw, the
loosened shadowy hair that he so ardently loved, there the sweet maidenhood of 'The
Golden Stair,' the blossom-like mouth and weary loveliness of the 'Laus Amoris,' the
passion-pale face of Andromeda, the thin hands and lithe beauty of the Vivian in 'Merlin's
Dream.' And it has always been so. A great artist invents a type, and Life tries to copy it,
to reproduce it in a popular form, like an enterprising publisher. Neither Holbein nor
Vandyck found in England what they have given us. They brought their types with them,
and Life with her keen imitative faculty set herself to supply the master with models. The
Greeks,